Ontario Tankard 2014 winner Greg Balsdon gunning for repeat

You’ve got to go all the way down to the No. 35 spot in the Canadian Team Ranking System to find one of the favourites in this week’s Recharge with Milk Ontario Tankard.

Don’t pay too much attention to Greg Balsdon’s national ranking, however. The Toronto-born skip’s rink just hasn’t had the time to play much this season after a breakthrough 2013-14 campaign.

“Because we were in the Brier last year, we just didn’t have the time off (to play more events this season),” Balsdon, 37, said after running his Tankard record to 4-1 with a convincing 7-0 win over Peter Corner in the second of three draws on Wednesday at the Flight Exec Centre in Dorchester.

“Work gets in the way a little bit. But I’ll take the Brier over a Spiel any day.”

Balsdon, third Mark Bice, second Tyler Morgan and front-enders Steve Bice and Jamie Farnell delivered one of the great upsets of the 2013-14 curling campaign, ending Glenn Howard’s eight-year Ontario title run with a win in the final in Smiths Falls. The crew didn’t look out of place at the Brier, either, finishing a respectable 5-6, two games out of the playoffs.

The Tankard-Brier run came after a solid showing at the qualifier for the Olympic trials in Kitchener, where Balsdon went 4-3, including a win over eventual Sochi gold medalist Brad Jacobs.

This year, with a spot in the Tankard locked up after last year’s win, the foursome stayed off the Grand Slam circuit and played just five spiels in Ontario prior to the provincials.

Balsdon, however, got in a little more action, sparing with some Ontario teams to get warmed up for this week.

The best preparation, of course, was going to the Brier last year in Kamloops.

“The Brier definitely helped us in terms of comfort level,” said Balsdon, a golf and curling pro at Glendale in Hamilton. “Playing those guys in that atmosphere just makes you more comfortable playing with the TV cameras on you.”

Returning to the national championship in Calgary this year could only help a rink that hopes to make another Olympic push in 2018. Any team that can beat Howard or Jacobs clearly has a shot to tackle the best in the world.

“We’re not quote-unquote one of the elite teams, but I feel if we play a bit more, we could be better,” Balsdon said. “We were two games short (of the playoffs at last year’s Brier). Give us a little more experience and in a couple years we’re probably not short at all.”

With Howard not in the Tankard field this year, Balsdon is expected to be in the mix the entire way. A second straight Brier berth is the clear goal after last year’s national debut.

“Now I can see why Glenn went eight years in a row,” Balsdon said. “You get a hunger for it. Now that you’ve been there, you want nothing more than to win it.”

TANKARD TALK

Balsdon is full of praise for the Dorchester organizing committee. One nice touch, he said, is that the players are getting meals this year, which hasn’t always been the case at provincials. He also says the facility is first class … The final unbeaten team saw its win streak end at four games. Mark Kean lost 10-5 on Wednesday afternoon against a Robert Rumfeldt squad that was in desperate need of a win after losing three in a row … Carp’s Colin Dow had a tough afternoon loss, missing a chance at an upset against John Epping. Dow gave up one in the 10th and another point in the extra end to lose 8-7 … It’s going to be quite a battle for the four playoff spots. After Wednesday afternoon’s play, eight of the 11 teams had three or four wins.

EVENING ACTION

In what was expected to be his team’s final game without top skip Wayne Middaugh, Corner improved to 4-3 with a 9-3 win over Kitchener-Waterloo’s Aaron Squires on Wednesday night. Corner has said the key for his Toronto-St. George’s team was to stay in the hunt without Middaugh. Mission accomplished … Dow (4-3) cooled off with two losses on Wednesday, but rebounded at night to beat Cory Heggestad 10-4 … Ottawa veteran Ian MacAulay is hanging tough. He capped a 2-1 day with a 9-5 win over Balsdon (4-2). A former provincial champ on Bryan Cochrane’s rink, MacAulay also sits at 4-2 … Epping (5-1) is showing he can capture the close ones. He won three one-point games on Wednesday, finishing off with a 6-5 win over Joe Frans … Jon St. Denis (2-5) pulled off an upset in the final game, edging Kean 9-8 … Epping is alone at first, just ahead of five teams with four wins.

AROUND THE COUNTRY

Newfoundland star Brad Gushue has officially launched a drive to bring the 2017 Brier to St. John’s. The 2016 Brier is in Ottawa … Speaking of Newfoundland and Labrador, just two teams (Gushue and Gary Wensman) are entered in the provincial championship this week. The province’s association gave hosting rights to Wensman’s local Labrador City rink, which is nowhere close to St. John’s. The distance played a big factor in many teams not putting their names in the hat, with Gushue being a heavy favourite … Olympic champ Jacobs got off to a strong start at the Northern Ontario championship, downing Chris Glibota 6-1 in a battle of Soo rinks on Wednesday in Kenora … In Manitoba, three-time Brier champ Jeff Stoughton opened with a 13-2 win over Roger Parker. Top-ranked Mike McEwen, looking for his elusive first Brier berth, also began play with a blowout, knocking off Glen Mikolajek 10-1.

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